Some years ago I have found an
interesting book in the Eastern Collection of the Library of the HungarianAcademy of Sciences.
This book - the work of Professor Harry Sichrovsky,
who is in charge of the South-Eastern Asian and Chinese affairs in the Ludwig
Boltzmann Instute in Austria,
a country neighbouring Hungary
- was the biography of Ferdinand Blumentritt, with
the subtitle: "An Austrian
Life for the Philippines". The volume, published in Manila in 1987, was written in a very readable, popular
form, and it fills a lacuna in the literature of the history of Philippines.
I only had a problem with the title of the work, because the hero of the
work, Ferdinand Blumentritt, was not Austrian at
all.

For the sake of security I got the
original edition: DerRevolutionär
von Leitmeritz. Ferdinand Blumentritt und der philippinische Freiheitskampf. (TheRevolutionaryfromLeitmeritz. Ferdinand Blumentritt
and the War of Independence of the Philippines).
This is nearer to the truth. Leitmeritz is a small
German town in the so-called Sudetenland, in Bohemia,
which was then part of the Hapsburg Empire together with Austria, Hungary
and Croatia.
The beautiful German river, the Elbe flows across Leitmeritz
(today in Litomerice, Czech Republic), which had 20,000
inhabitants then - a city

p.4

of merchants, soldiers and clerks, a
typical European bürgerstadt,
and a Catholic episcopal seat. The city, with its
city status dating back to 1227,is surrounded by a hilly woodland,
has a strong Catholic spirit and was always open to Catholic immigrants from
all parts of the world. One of the famous sons of Leitmeritz
is OttavioBroggio, the
famous Baroque architect, who designed the episcopal
cathedral of the town, devoted to the martyr St. Stephen. The city provided
new home for the famous Spanish family of colonizers, the Alcarazes,
who had been exiled from Manila
in 1773 together with the Jesuits. The daughter of the family, a Mediterran beauty, Dolores de Alcaraz
was married to Franz Blumentritt, a member of a
distinguished family, who came from the banks of the LakeBoden, Switzerland.
One of the ancestors of Franz Blumentritt fought
against the Ottoman Turks, and took part in the famous 1686 siege of Buda
(the historical capital of Hungary).
This ancestor was rewarded by the Hapsburg Emperor with estates for his valor. Dolores and Franz had several children, and for
some years my great-great grandfather (their nephew) lived with them too,
after his father died of cholera. He later Hungarianized
his family name to Virághalmy. Considering the
atmosphere of the age the sons received an open-minded education, based on accomodation, in accord with the Jesuit pedagogical
ideal. The family homes in Leitmeritz and Prague, full of valuable relics from the Philippine
tribes and the history of Spanish colonization in the Philippines, had a deep impact on
the sons and on my great-great grandfather, who later published several
anonymous articles about South-Eastern Asia in Hungarian in the VasárnapiÚjság(Hungarian
Sunday News). Only
Ferdinand, the grandson of Dolores de Alcaraz
committed his whole life to the Philippines.

After getting an M. A. of History and
Geography on the Charles University of Prague, Ferdinand Blumentritt
became a teacher, and in 1900 he was appointed as headmaster of a high school
in Leitmeritz. He had two aims in life: the
coordinating of the research and interest toward the Philippines - which had been emerged in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century -,
and the patriotic rearing of the youth of his city and its surroundings.

p.5

It is a legitimate question to ask what
did the Germans have to do with this area in the 19th century?
For the Philippines was a
Spanish colony, Malaysia
was British, and Indonesia
was a Dutch one. Yetwecanread
in a letterby José Rizalsent to Blumentritt in
1887: "Finden Sie nicht -
sagte ich /Rizal/ meinem Landsmann - daß es ein wenig traurig ist, diese uns betreffenden
Kenntnisse vom Auslande zu erhalten? - Ja, Dank den deutschen Gelehrten
bekommen wir einige genaue Nachricht über unser Volk, und wenn alles zu Hause
zerstört sein wird, müssen wir nach Deutschland herschiffen um die Museen zu
besehen, um die deutschen Bücher zu durchblättern: das ist traurig, aber es muß so sein."(Don't you deem it a little sad - I
/Rizal/ have said one of my fellow citizens - that we got the information
concerning us from abroad? Yes, due to the German scholars, we have precise
knowledge abour our own nation, and if all had been
destroyed at home, then we would have to sail to Germany, to look the German
museums and to turn over the pages of the German books. This is a sad truth,
but this is a fact.) Yet these researches had no connection with the colonial
politics of Imperial Germany and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. This fact is
testified by Rudolf Virchow, the famous anhropologist,
pathologist and historian of pharmacology of Pomeranian origin, the teacher
of Dr Rizal, who, as a liberal representative of the Reichstag, voted and
protested on several occasions against the German colonial plans. Blumentritt,
whorespected Virchow as
his mentor, acknowledgedthis in a letter in 1889: "...aber jenen, die, nur weil sie
hörten, daß ich ein Deutscher bin, glauben, daß ich ein deutscher Untertan bin, und deshalb ein Agent
Bismarcks - denen sollte ich eine Lektion in Geographie geben... Liebe
Freunde: die Deutschen bewohnen nicht nur den größten Teil von Deutschland
mit 42 Millionen Menschen, sondern auch ein Drittel der Schweiz, das gesamte Luxembourg, ländliche Gebiete Hollands, die preußischen
Städte im Baltikum etc. Von den 38 Millionen Einwohnern von Österreich-Ungarn
sind 10 Millionen Deutsche. Ich
bin solcheinÖsterreich-Deutscher..." (But for those who, when they hear that I am a German,
believe that I am a German citizen, and because of it, I'm an agent of Bismarck, I must held a lecture of geography. My dear friends, the Germans
inhabit not only the greater part of Germany, forming a mass of 42 million
people, but they are the inhabitants of one-third of Switzerland, of the
whole of Luxembourg, of the Dutch countryside, not to mention the Prussian
citizens of the Baltic countries, etc., and they amount to 10 million of the
38 million inhabitants of Austria-Hungary. And I belong to this group of
Germans: to the Austrian Germans.)

p.6

Thus the German scholars' interest in orientalism can be explained not by imperialistic
political attitudes, but by the development of comparative historical
linguistics. Besides Franz Bopp and Jacob Grimm I think above all of Wilhelm
von Humboldt, who sucessfully applied the methods
developed by his forerunners to the research of the Malay-Polynesian
languages. Of course, Blumentritt too could not
avoid the impact of the world of ideas of Humboldt, the sources of which had
been the German romantics, Herder, Kant and Hegel. The first serious linguistical work by Blumentritt
was published in 1882, under the titleVocabulareinzelnerAusdrücke und Redensarten, welchedemSpanischenderphilippinischenInselneigenthümlichsind(The vocabulary of some peculiar Philippine
Spanish expressions and idioms). During the writing of his work Blumentritt established connections with Dr. Hendrik Kern, an indologist,
who led Indonesian studies at the University of Leiden, Professor Georg
Alexander Wilken, who was the director of the
Library of Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology at Leiden, and
Hans Georg Conon von derGabelentz,
who was at this time the Professor of Eastern Asian Linguistics in Leipzig.
He got further help in his work from Pardo de Tavera, who was related to the Mexican Cardinal of the
same name, and from Mr. Labhart-Lutz, the Manilan Ambassador of Austria-Hungary. Thus Blumentritt could publish a sequel to his book in 1885.

After finishing the vocabulary, Blumentritt got some interesting manuscripts from Manila. One of them was
a Catholic Catechism written in an ancestral aboriginal language, used by
Spanish Franciscans. This was translated by Blumentritt
to the somewhat more modern Ilongota language. At
this time began he his conversations and
correspondence with Hugo Schuchardt, whose later Wörter und Sachen(Words
and Things) method of linguistics began to take shape about this time. The
essence of this method was that when trying to understand the migration of
loanwords it is not enough to rely only on the phonetical
laws existing and working in the given age, and perhaps on the meaning of the
words themselves, but we must examine the "things
and objects" denoted by the

p.7

words too. Of course we must also take in
account the facts of the cultural histor. (It should
be noted that a similar linguistic theory was elaborated by P. Heras SJ, a Professor of the Ateneo
in Manila.)
The legacy of Hugo Schuchardt was elaborated by one
of my colleagues in Graz,
thus the Blumentritt-Schuchardt correspondence is
accessible to the research.

Encouraged by his friends, the young
geographer Hans Meyer (who was the first to reach the summit of the
Kilimanjaro in 1889) and his father, Herman Julius Meyer, the owner of the
Bibliographical Institute in Hildburghausen (the
publishing house which publishes the famous Meyer Lexicon), Blumentritt compiled the several volumes of Bibliotheca Philippina. This bibliography, striving for completeness,
contains all the linguistic, geographical, ethnographical, historical and
scientific books and manuscripts on the Philippines. After Blumentritt published his work, FedorJagor, an ehtnographer of
Russian origin and the director of the Ethnographical Collection of the BerlinUniversity, immediately
congratulated him.

His colleagues, the geographers also
took note of Blumentritt. His VersucheinerEthnographiederPhilippinen (An
Attempt of an Ethnography of the Philippines), published in Petermann’sMittheilungen,
is not only a basic textbook of ethnography of the area, but one of geography
too. He got many orders for various essays, for example Die Goldfundstellen auf den Philippinen und ihreAusbeutung(The Goldmines of the Philippines and
their exploitation), or Die Erdbeben des Juli 1880 auf den Philippinen(The Earthquake of July 1880 on the
Philippines). The collaborators were VincenzHaardt von Hartenthurn of Wien,
and Alexander Schadenberg, a chemist from Breslau,
who later worked in Manila.
Shortly afterwards Ferdinand Blumentritt became a
member of the "MilitärwissenschaftlicherVerein
in Theresienstadt" too. He had to contribute to several military subjects,
for example in an article he wrote for The
Washington Sentinel in 1900. In this article he argued against the
American annexation of the Philippines,
on the basis of military considerations: "...In
the Philippines, however, the natives are used to the obligatory service. So
if the Filipinos adopt the military organization

p.8.

which is called Landwehr
in Austria and Hanved in Hungary,
they can form a permanent army of 12,000 to 18,000 soldiers in time of peace,
and in time of war there will be in their ranks an army of 150,000 to 200,000
valiant, sober and cheap soldiers. The United States may dispose of this
army in any conflict arising in the extreme Orient. Let the Americans compare
this situation with that created by the annexation. If they annex the country
they have to maintain a great army of volunteerswich will be very expensive and which, because of the
effects of the climate, will not be able to render as many services as in
their own country. In case of war this expensive army will not be able to
fight against the enemy, because its forces will be necessary to stifle or to
prevent revolution in the Philippines."

Yet Ferdinand Blumentritt
was fundamentally a historian. His two interesting works, considered as
fundamental works in the history of the Philippines, are the HolländischeAngriffe auf
die PhilippinenimXVI., XVII. und XVIII. Jahrhunderte(Dutch Assaults on the Philippines in 16th, 17th and 18th centuries)
and the Die Chinesen
auf den Philippinen(The Chinese in the Philippines).
According to my view, his Spanish mythological vocabulary also belongs to
this category, regarding its many historical allusions. His work had a great
influence among the Jesuits.

Harry Sichrovsky
limits his book about Ferdinand Blumentritt on his
acquaintance and later friendship with José Rizal. José Rizal got acquainted
with Blumentritt in July 1886. Blumentritt
supported him in every matter, his house was always
open before the young man of mixed heritage. His deep friendship could last
only for ten years. José Rizal, who had returned to his homeland, wrote the
last letter to Blumentritt on 29th december 1896: "Prof.
Fernando Blumentritt - My dear Brother, when you
receive this letter, I shall be dead by then. Tomorrow at 7, I shall be shot;
but I am innocent of the crime of rebellion."

p.9

Blumentritt never recovered from the experience of
the execution of his best friend. As the intellectual leader of a Sudeten German
city, he was a genuine liberal, who opposed colonialism, a Catholic with a
reforming tendency, who was very far from racism. As a Sudeten German, he
regarded the "indio" Rizal as a human being, as
anybody else. According to contemporary historians of ideas the national
liberalism of the 19th century was near to an elitist conception of human
equality, which was limited to a narrow elite.
Indeed Blumentritt held the Philippinos
immature and not ready for independence (after their oppression for hundreds
of years), but he believed that everybody should get a chance for education -
and if he was talented, it was the interest of the state, of the community,
of the nation to ensure him work and living space, so he would be then useful
for his homeland. The country, which doesn't do this, is - according to Blumentritt - unworthy of independence. He proclaimed and
taught this message as a headmaster, as the knight of the Order of Isabella
the Catholic, as the member of the Geographical Society of Madrid and Vienna, as a honorary member of
the Indochina Academy of Paris and of scientific research societies in Amsterdam, Lima, Tokyo and Berlin.
He died in 1913.